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KiCad 5.1.6 released

What's Kicad like then? I may go for it... My groan with much CAD freeware is that the GUI and general facilities are often arcane and really awkward... anything but intuitive! Spice sim and PCB layout programs that seem to have been designed for use by IT professionals and not EE's is often the result...
 
It’s the feckin bomb.

ive been designing a new aktiv crossover for isobariks using kicad and have found hierarchical sheets and global tags a godsend.

The instant feedback afforded by the 3D view is soo useful for spotting problems with allocated packages.

it’s hard to justify spending on a commercial solution
 
Arkless Electronics said:
What's Kicad like then? I may go for it... My groan with much CAD freeware is that the GUI and general facilities are often arcane and really awkward... anything but intuitive! Spice sim and PCB layout programs that seem to have been designed for use by IT professionals and not EE's is often the result...
Click to expand...
It has its share of quirks, but so do all CAD programs. Development really took off when CERN got involved a while back, and v5 is much nicer than v4 was.
 
I had to use Zuken Cadstar at work for quite a while... nightmare! Then moved to EAGLE which I find pretty good.

I will usually be doing just a single sided board and at most a double sided one. Through hole components exclusively (well apart from times when I really need a specific IC function and it can only be obtained in SMD anyway!).

Now't worse than some CAD freeware in which to do a task you maybe have to enter a script in almost HTML like gobbledegook with certain variables adjusted etc into the registry or similar as opposed to just drag and drop with a good commercial version.
 
If you're familiar with Eagle, you'll probably find KiCad easy enough to adapt to. I've used KiCad to make some 4-layer boards with both SMD and through-hole parts. All the basics are there. It has diff pair routing (if a little clunky), but that's about as advanced as it gets. High-speed parallel buses and large BGA chips might be a challenge, but something tells me you weren't planning on using either. And don't expect the auto-router to do anything useful.
 
mansr said:
If you're familiar with Eagle, you'll probably find KiCad easy enough to adapt to. I've used KiCad to make some 4-layer boards with both SMD and through-hole parts. All the basics are there. It has diff pair routing (if a little clunky), but that's about as advanced as it gets. High-speed parallel buses and large BGA chips might be a challenge, but something tells me you weren't planning on using either. And don't expect the auto-router to do anything useful.
Click to expand...

I do strictly analogue work so "High-speed parallel buses and large BGA chips" are definitely of no interest to me!
I have yet to see any PCB software in which the auto-router was any more use than a chocolate tea pot...
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I have yet to see any PCB software in which the auto-router was any more use than a chocolate tea pot...
Click to expand...
Someone even made a t-shirt:
BxfnZs_IAAAiE8G
 
I used to use Eagle but now do all on KiCad. There is not much that is intuitive in either version, I think it is best to choose one and download all the help books you can get.

I now stay with KiCad because of the multi layer abilities. I had to download all available instruction books and just spend a few days with the software and help books going through the lessons in a linear fashion.

I have still only scratched the surface of its capabilities (4 layers Digital Audio) but it does allow you to make a very nice PCB.
On one of my power supply boards I used 15mm traces :D
 
I didn't find KiCad particularly difficult to get going with. Perhaps not intuitive, but not really surprising either. Everything I expected to find was available somewhere. I guess your experience depends on how you expect such a program to work. Somewhere, I saw someone complaining that the schematic editor didn't behave like Illustrator with little handles allowing things to be arbitrarily resized. To that I say, thank goodness. Schematic capture isn't supposed to work that way.
 
Excelent, an update is very welcome as It does have a <slight> tendency to crash if you have been using it for a while - I tend to restart it after a few hours, I have never lost any work when it does crash (AFAIK).

Compared to the other CAD packages I have used (CADStar/EasyEDA/AutoCAD) KiCAD is a doddle - seriously, the documentation is a bit naff so I just rely on YT for learning how to do what I don't know how to.

5.1.6 still not available for Fedora, hopefully it will be in the update stream in the next few days
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I had to use Zuken Cadstar at work for quite a while... nightmare! Then moved to EAGLE which I find pretty good.

I will usually be doing just a single sided board and at most a double sided one. Through hole components exclusively (well apart from times when I really need a specific IC function and it can only be obtained in SMD anyway!).

Now't worse than some CAD freeware in which to do a task you maybe have to enter a script in almost HTML like gobbledegook with certain variables adjusted etc into the registry or similar as opposed to just drag and drop with a good commercial version.
Click to expand...
Cadstar was horrible, I have also used Zuken Visula long ago, Protel and Orcad
There is a good Eagle importer in KiCad as we took a lot of Eagle refugees after the license changes.
It is a different philosophy as the symbol and footprint are independent.
KiCad is opensource, not just freeware
One nice feature is the close integration with FreeCAD
 
I'm hoping that with 1000's of users and it's freeware/opensource nature that vast libraries of parts will already be extant and plenty of older/"obsolete" parts amongst them? Valve's for example and their sockets... This would be my numero uno motive for choosing any PCB package...

Symbol and footprint independent eh? Not too sure about that....

I have, apart form EAGLE, Ultiboard, as part of Multisim, and have never used it yet... as I do my simulations with Multisim (love it! So much better than LTSpice which is a typical crap GUI freeware program) it should be particularly easy to just export the schematic from the sim to Ultiboard... in theory...

I downloaded Kicad latest version last night anyway... 32 bit!
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I'm hoping that with 1000's of users and it's freeware/opensource nature that vast libraries of parts will already be extant and plenty of older/"obsolete" parts amongst them? Valve's for example and their sockets... This would be my numero uno motive for choosing any PCB package...

Symbol and footprint independent eh? Not too sure about that....

I have, apart form EAGLE, Ultiboard, as part of Multisim, and have never used it yet... as I do my simulations with Multisim (love it! So much better than LTSpice which is a typical crap GUI freeware program) it should be particularly easy to just export the schematic from the sim to Ultiboard... in theory...

I downloaded Kicad latest version last night anyway... 32 bit!
Click to expand...

there is a valve preamp done in kicad on one of the pictures below, for hobby use it’s hard to justify paying for anything commercial when Kicad is so good.

BTW you can get a grey market latest version of 64bit windows for a couple of quid on eBay, even if you mainly use Linux as I do it’s worth having a copy at that price.


russel said:
Non switching amp in box

ns by

TDA1541A, note extra decoupling, which was effective in reducing noise, particularly from the filter, which also needed a heatsink.
tda1514A by

OPA828 based shunt RIAA amplifier, dual mono.

riaa by

PCBs of various projects left to right RIAA, hifi world phono pre, hifi world heater supply for pre, hifi world HT for pre, Non switching MOSFET power amplifier, Class A power amplifier.

pcb by

Any one feeling brave is welcome to the full design files in kicad.
Click to expand...
 
russel said:
there is a valve preamp done in kicad on one of the pictures below, for hobby use it’s hard to justify paying for anything commercial when Kicad is so good.

BTW you can get a grey market latest version of 64bit windows for a couple of quid on eBay, even if you mainly use Linux as I do it’s worth having a copy at that price.
Click to expand...

My PC is 32 bit!
 
It's a top spec PC from about 2006 and works just great for everything I want to do. My next one will of course be 64 bit:) If it ain't broke...
 
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